The Carbon Market Fraud

In the past I have posted about my view that describing cap and trade and the carbon market in the language of capitalism is a deception intended to make people comfortable with the concept, when it is in fact a government-rigged process designed to favor some constituencies and ultimately extend its power over the economy.

The Foundry takes up this issue in a post that points out how deplorably centralized governments of the past, Russia specifically, have dealt with environmental issues. It goes on from there to the present:

..The left knows this, which is why they have tried so hard to drape their latest big government plans in free market rhetoric.

The problem is there is nothing free market about carbon cap and trading. New Zealand Climate Science Coalition chair Bryan Leyland explains why:

So, to my knowledge, carbon trading is the only commodity trading where it is impossible to establish with reasonable accuracy how much is being bought and sold, where the commodity that is traded is invisible and can perform no useful purpose for the purchaser, and where both parties benefit if the quantities traded have been exaggerated. … It is, therefore, an open invitation to fraud and that is exactly what is happening all over the world.

Carbon is ubiquitous in our lives and in our economy. The only way a cap and trade “market” could work is with round the clock and pervasive big government surveillance and monitoring of everything you do. Does that sound like a “free market” to you?